


Worse than a spy

by fightingtheblankpage



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Mild Gore, resurrection fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingtheblankpage/pseuds/fightingtheblankpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's not like there's a revolving door between where you are and here," Lydia says. The knowledge that her voice carries not only to Cora, seated in the armchair in the corner of the bedroom, but also to wherever Laura is, is as unsettling as before. Lydia adds, purposefully loudly, like it can chase away the eerie feeling, "I'm not your doorman."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worse than a spy

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [Elizabeth](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eak_a_mouse/pseuds/eak_a_mouse)

> _In this life, you can give yourself or withhold yourself as you please, my dear. But never lend yourself. That way you’re worse than a spy.  -_ John le Carre ( _Honorable Schoolboy_ )

 

"Just one more time," Laura chants. "Just one more time," she repeats, until Lydia gives in.

She doesn't say she's giving in, of course. Things like giving in and giving up are gone from Lydia's vocabulary.

Cora doesn’t say much in general; she can’t distinguish between when Laura’s here and when she isn’t, other than by watching Lydia’s reactions. Sometimes, though, she tilts her head to the side almost as if she’s listening to Laura’s voice.

"It's not like there's a revolving door between where you are and here," Lydia says. The knowledge that her voice carries not only to Cora, seated in the armchair in the corner of the bedroom, but also to wherever Laura is, is as unsettling as before. Lydia adds, purposefully loudly, like it can chase away the eerie feeling, "I'm not your doorman."

"No," Laura says. When Lydia isn't looking straight at her, she's there. When Lydia turns her head towards the desk, Laura disappears, so Lydia resolutely looks at her own nails; sometimes she flicks her gaze to Cora. In her peripheral vision, something's moving ‒ Laura tapping her foot up and down, up and down. "The way I understand, it's more of a scale. Something leaves this place, something has to replace it. Think about what I am right now as energy. You had to steal energy from my brother to pay for Peter's passage."

"I didn't want to," Lydia says. Laura's foot stills. Lydia looks up, wants to assess Laura's expression, but of course, Laura isn't there. Cora’s eyebrows arch, so Lydia says, “I didn’t want to bring Peter back.”

“We know,” Cora says.

"We know," Laura echoes. "Look. You've made quite a stir.  They're watching you now, but they couldn't approach with Peter close, and they can't approach with me here."

"Who are they?" Lydia asks, angry now. Everybody's keeping secrets, and walking circles around her, and treating her like she's smart enough to think for them, but not smart enough to be allowed to think for herself.

"Others," Laura says, dismissively. "I don't really‒ I don't look over my shoulder, so I don't know."

Lydia sighs. She looks at her nails so long they become stains of colour against bone-pale background of her hands. "If I do this," she asks, slow and tired, "will they go away?"

"No," Laura says bluntly. Lydia can almost-see her perched on the bed, a hint of a woman, an echo of a face turned towards Lydia. "But I won't go away, either. Just one more time," she repeats.

Lydia hesitates. She doesn't want to do this, but she doesn't want to be completely left alone, either. Being alone leaves her mind wide open for things to slither in.

“We can make him go away,” Cora says. Lydia turns to her, losing track of the conversation, confused. “Peter,” Cora explains. “You said Derek was weakened after what you‒ after what happened with Peter. You said you stopped almost at the last moment.”

“Yes,” Lydia says. “Yes, but it wasn’t my fault.”

“Don’t stop this time,” Cora says over her. “We won’t.”

It’s been ‘we’ since the beginning, not ‘I’. Even with the sisters separated by a wall only Lydia can penetrate, they’re of the same mind. Lydia can’t look at Laura, but she’s almost sure Laura’s nodding.

"Tell me the plan," Lydia says.

***

It's different when Lydia's fully conscious. The magic behind it is her choice now, and it's worse, without the dream-like quality making the edges of her actions blurry. It also feels better, in the way that picking at scabs and prodding at bruises feels good.

Laura isn't buried under floorboards, the way Peter was. She has a proper grave in a proper place next to her mother's grave. It’s just what's inside the grave that isn't proper at all: a young woman cut in half, killed at the hand of one of her own.

Lydia's worried it's going to make her sick; she thinks very hard about not throwing up as Cora's digging in the hard-packed soil. It’s been raining earlier today, so the earth is wet and heavy. It sticks to Lydia’s shoes and dries to form a hard shell.

Cora’s movements are rhythmic, and she doesn’t seem to tire. It helps to think whatever's under the ground is a convenient gateway for Laura to slip through, and nothing else. Laura herself is sitting on a nearby gravestone, humming under her breath.

Lydia can hardly hear her over the sounds Peter’s making through the wolfsbane-laced gag in his mouth. His eyes are wide, disbelieving more than scared: he didn't expect his tool to turn against him. Maybe he didn’t expect Cora to want revenge, or maybe he just didn’t think Lydia and Cora would come after him together. Either way, he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Peter tries not to look at Laura, like it would make her disappear ‒ the trick is to do the opposite, but Lydia doesn't tell him this.

Someone tried to put Laura's body back together, probably the people at the morgue. Between over a year of decomposition and how the corpse is arranged, it almost doesn't look severed in half. Laura leaves Peter alone to peer over the edge of the grave, standing so close to Lydia their shoulders should brush.

"Huh," Laura says in a tone of surprise. Lydia doesn't ask how it feels, to see yourself stripped bare of every detail: just naked bone with dried meat clinging to it in places, straw-dry hair over a smiling skull. At some point all bodies start to look alike, so it’s possible Laura doesn’t even recognise herself. Unless, of course, there’s some other link between a body and whatever Laura is right now, that tells her that this was once her.

It doesn't make Lydia sick.

"You can't create a passage that doesn't go both ways," Lydia tells Peter by the way of explanation, but he isn't listening. He's squirming like the worms still at the bottom of the coffin; Lydia wonders idly what are they feeding on, there isn't enough of the corpse left.

Lydia stole something from Derek. She takes everything back from Peter.

***

Laura's resurrection is a slow-going process. Lydia's clothes are ruined anyway, even though she didn’t take part in the digging, so she sits on the grass and watches. Cora crouches next to her, her eyes alert and wide.

In front of them, muscle blossom over bone, and sinews wrap around the outline of the body like poison ivy. Laura isn't being ripped away from death like Peter was; the earth gives her back willingly. Her insides bloom in the bed of her abdomen, her lungs spread like leaves, her heart nestles in her chest, heavy and content like an animal. As Lydia and Cora watch, teeth pierce gums like white seedlings in red soil, and new skin grows over new veins, layer after layer, until the wonder of Laura's return is hidden beneath it. Hair curls from Laura's skull where the brain took residence earlier, and sockets fill with eyes.

Laura’s beautiful. It’s a startling, stunning thought, because Lydia never considered human insides to be a thing of wonder other than the biological kind. But here Laura is, entirely reborn, absolutely marvellous. Next to Lydia, Cora lets out a breath that could be a sigh, but is more likely a name, whispered too quietly for human ears.

But the body is just a shell, just a show, until Laura's lips part and she sucks in a gasp of air, her first breath, and everything moves with minute twitches of living things, invisible until they're gone.

Everything's a miracle.

Laura isn't unsteady in her new body. She takes possession of it with that first breath, suddenly becomes it, inseparable. She stands at the bottom of the grave, naked and proud, dressed in the visceral wonder of her being alive. She breathes like it's the most wonderful task she'll ever undertake; she moves like she's about to dance.

Lydia doesn't know how she can keep someone like Laura, or how Cora’s planning on keeping her. She doesn't believe in Laura's promise to stay. Wild things aren’t meant to keep promises.

Laura's looking at them, and Lydia lets herself look back, because Laura isn't disappearing this time. Laura's smile is sharp, sudden, shamelessly happy. "Give me a hand?" she asks, spreading both her arms towards Lydia and Cora.

Lydia reaches inside the grave, just like she did before to wrap her fingers around bone and become a link through which Peter’s life flowed into Laura. But this time Laura catches her hand, turns it palm up. She puts her lips so close Lydia thinks Laura's going to kiss her wrist, but instead Laura opens her mouth and sets her teeth against skin. She presses down, impossibly controlled ‒ a descentwhere Lydia expected a sudden clamping of strong jaws. She’s twisting her fingers with Cora’s with her other hand.

It's not a gaping wound like the one Lydia had in the soft flesh of her side ‒ it's a needle-like sting and a single droplet of blood, lapped away by a pink tongue. "Here," Laura says, letting go of her. "I always keep my promises."

Then Cora finally pulls her out of the grave, just as easily as she dug the body out, and they’re clinging to each other, whispering, holding so hard Lydia can hear bones, both old and new, straining under the weight of love regained.

Lydia's practical, so she did what Cora didn’t think to do and brought clothes ‒ her own old things, simple and clean. Laura puts them on gratefully, smoothing out the cotton of the shirt like it feels good under her fingers, again and again.

After that, Cora and she bury Peter in her grave.

***

"Where do you want to go first?" Lydia asks when they're in the car. She’s the designated driver; Cora never got her driver’s license. It probably wouldn’t stop her anyway, but Lydia doesn’t think it would help her reputation if she got pulled over with two girls presumed dead in her car, one of whom would be behind the wheel.

"Food," Laura says at once, and then snorts. It's a quick, unbecoming sound. Perfectly normal, and because of that, oddly perfect. "No, wait. Derek."

For a moment her expression is fleetingly guilty, but she rubs her stomach anyway. Cora’s beaming at her, so young and so happy Lydia can’t remember why she thought Cora was terrifying the first time they’d met.

Lydia can only imagine how hungry Laura is, after a year of not eating anything. "We can get something to go and I'll drive both of you to Derek’s after. I'm starving, too. Resurrecting werewolves does that to me."

Laura snorts again, and then purses her lips. She seems uncomfortable, like she has too many emotions and can't settle on any single one for more than just a few seconds. "Do you think he's going to mind? About Peter. I mean‒"

“Why would he,” Cora says flatly, but Laura doesn’t appear to be convinced, shifting her gaze between Cora and Lydia.

"I, for one," Lydia says loudly, interrupting both of them, "think it's a perfectly fair exchange. More than fair."

"Okay," Laura says, completely happy to just trust them on this since both Cora and Lydia agree. "Can we get a pie? I'm in a mood for something sweet."

“Me too,” Cora says quickly, and Lydia’s reminded of the fact that she’s the younger sister, just like Lydia is.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.   
> Love,  
> [Monika](http://talktoyourcactus.tumblr.com/)


End file.
